Dr. Katz starts Kickstarter Campaign

Dr. Katz starts Kickstarter Campaign

A crowdfunding campaign has begun to fund an animated comedy series starring comedian Jonathan Katz. Katz is best known for playing the title character on TV’s Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, a role for which he won an Emmy.

Jonathan and animator Mike Salva made an animated short called Death Row Diet (embed below). In it, Jonathan plays a man on death row and Weight Watchers, where he consults with his lawyer (played by Tom Leopold). The cartoon was a big hit at film festivals and won a lot of awards, including a television pilot award from the New York Television Festival.

Now Death Row Diet is being expanded into an animated series about the main character’s life in prison.

A number of scripts have been written, and they were ready to begin recording the dialogue, when their funding source for the project backed out. This put the production of Death Row Diet on hold indefinitely.

The creators immediately began planning a Kickstarter campaign to fund the series. They are offering rewards to backers, including a “special thanks” listing in the credits, an “associate producer” credit, a speaking part in the cartoon, DVD copies of autographed by Jonathan Katz… and having the director & a voice actor come to your house to clean your bathroom.

The campaign runs until July 11, 2013. Complete details of the Kickstarter can be found here.

Zhao said with her Bass Reeves biopic, she’ll direct a more traditional cast like she did with her first-timers: “You can work with an actor in a certain way, you can create an environment like Terrence Malick has always done.”